California Governor: No Concerts Until We Have Coronavirus Vaccine [Update]

California governor Gavin Newsom has added to the prediction that concerts are unlikely to return until 2021. During a press conference, Newsom said mass gatherings would be “negligible at best” until the population has herd immunity and a vaccine is widely available.

Public health expert Zeke Emanuel made headlines after claiming fall 2021 would be the earliest we could expect concerts to come back. "Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they're going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that's a plausible possibility,” Emanuel claimed. “I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we're talking fall 2021 at the earliest."

The news broke the hearts of music fans nationwide, but it may simply become the new normal, as a coronavirus vaccine isn’t expected until spring 2021, at the earliest.

"The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine,” says Newsom. “So large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers, all together across every conceivable difference, health and otherwise, is not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations." [via Blabbermouth]

Many bands have rescheduled their postponed tour dates for late 2020 and early 2021, but it’s possible that another mass of concert cancelations may come, especially if public health experts recommend further social distancing measures.

Update: The mayors of Los Angeles and New York have seemed to echo the timeline for the return of concerts. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mayor Eric Garcetti indicated during conference call that "large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least one year."

"I think we all have never wanted science to work so quickly," Garcetti also told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. "But until there's either a vaccine, some sort of pharmaceutical intervention, or herd immunity, the science is the science. And public health officials have made very clear we have miles and miles to walk before we can be back in those environments."

New York Mayor Bill DiBlasio also spoke with CNN, stating that public gatherings would be "one of the last things we bring back online. "I've got to see in my city real steady progress, even to start to think about relaxing some of those social distancing standards even a little bit,” said De Blasio. “I want to get people back to work, of course. I want to get kids back to school. But I think it will take months to go through that whole sequence. And the last thing I want to do is gather 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 people in one place, that's like the exact opposite of social distancing."